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The same exhausted faces that finished last year’s marathon 20-race season in Brazil nearly four months ago were all fresh smiles in Australia as they prepared for the curtain to come up on a season that promises much.
Part of the general bonhomie is the location itself.
Melbourne might be a long way to come but once you get there it is, as Jenson Button says: “A great first race. The fans are enthusiastic, the whole of the paddock are excited to be racing again and it’s such a beautiful place.”
The usual political rows about the value of the grand prix to Melbourne and the state of Victoria may be rumbling on in the background as always, but there is no faulting the effort the organisers put into this race.
Ambling into the circuit through autumnal Albert Park yesterday, there is much from which other F1 venues could learn, including family areas, where pre-school kids play on car-themed bouncy castles as their older brothers and sisters race on junior karts next door.
The next generation of F1 fans are already being groomed.
Come Sunday, the current one can expect to see a classic Australian Grand Prix, if all the pre-season predictions are correct.
If anything, the anticipation ahead of this race is even greater than normal at the start of a new season, for two reasons – everyone seems more than usually unsure about where they stand and it is genuinely too close to call.
Speaking to engineers from two different top teams, both came to a similar conclusion – it is very hard to split the top five teams of Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren, Lotus and Mercedes.
Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso backed up that impression when he said he felt any one of the 10 drivers could win on Sunday – in other words, anyone from those teams.
And that merely emphasises perhaps the stand-out on-track story of the year so far – the huge progress made by Mercedes.
They – and therefore Lewis Hamilton – seem to be genuine contenders right at the front. One engineer even said he felt that, judging from pre-season testing in Barcelona, Mercedes might even be a little clear of the rest, with Red Bull/Ferrari/Lotus in a group behind and McLaren a little off that pace.
Button admitted that, were the first race in Barcelona in European winter temperatures, McLaren would be worried.
But it’s not.
Melbourne is a different track in very different weather, even if rain is forecast for Saturday.
“If you look at testing times, there are certain times we definitely couldn’t have done,” Button said.
“We’re not too worried. We just have to get out there and see what we have. We’re just excited about getting out there and seeing where we stand.
It will be mixed conditions so that will be difficult.”
McLaren was the centre of attention off the track, too.
The revelation – by BBC Sport last week, and not yet officially admitted – that Honda is returning to F1 as their engine supplier in 2015 was a hot topic, as was the news that mobile phone company Vodafone is to end its entire involvement in F1 at the end of the year, including its title sponsorship of McLaren.
If it is true – as the Times reported yesterday – that the real reason for this was because of the company’s unhappiness at F1’s continued involvement in troubled Bahrain, that may give even the more blinkered of the sport’s power brokers pause for thought. – BBC Sport.
Online Reporter